01.21.11
The Bullshit Manufacturer
He appears onstage, makes his statement:
Our job is to do everything we can to ensure that businesses can take root, and folks can find good jobs,” the president said.
“We’re going to build stuff, and invent stuff,” said Obama, emphasizing the need to boost American exports to countries around the world, an issue that was a focus during the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to the White House this week.
“That’s where the customers are. It’s that simple,” Obama said.
His choice of Immelt to head the competitiveness panel won applause from the Chamber of Commerce, which called it a “promising step” toward creating jobs and enhancing U.S. competitiveness. But the Alliance for American Manufacturing condemned the choice, dismissing Immelt as “an outsourcing CEO” whose appointment would “alienate working class voters.”
On GE and outsourcing, from various places over the last few years:
US industrial giant General Electric (GE) plans to outsource jobs to Bangladesh for the first time, presenting a huge opportunity in the outsourcing business.
GE, which employs around 40,000 people in India alone — mainly in the outsourcing sector — will initially provide jobs to a company founded by Bangladeshi expatriates in the US.
Mi3 Inc, based in the US, will invest around $300 million in Bangladesh initially to set up facilities to receive work orders from GE, said company officials at a function in Dhaka on Wednesday. — 2009, here.
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There is a buzz at the ground-floor cafeteria of Gecis, the back-office operation of General Electric just outside Delhi. About a dozen people are gathered round a corner, and more are forming a queue. “Have you got your free drink?” a woman in a green sari asks a colleague, lifting a can of Red Bull in her hand. The energy-drink maker is giving free samples of a new flavor. It’s nearly 4 p.m. in India, the beginning of the workday for many at Gecis, and they can use the energy boost. By the time their U.S. colleagues clock in, they will have done a fair amount of tasks for GE worldwide, from underwriting insurance and collecting delinquent accounts for its finance businesses, to performing cost analysis and tracking inventory for its industrial operations.
This is the world of offshore business-process outsourcing (BPO), where corporations farm out routine office functions to developing countries to take advantage of lower labor costs and higher productivity. — here.
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In the past, I have made blog entries on this issue of mainstay American corporations — like General Electric (GE) — benefiting from U.S. tax subsidies and the loyalty of American consumers who buy their products generation after generation to the tune of billions upon billions of profitability. BUT now these companies, solely in the name of corporate profitability, reciprocate neither their loyalty, nor duty to Americans to be good corporate citizens. Here we have a case in point about GE methodically shipping their entire energy efficient lighting manufacturing operation out of Ohio to China with the primary reason being given as lower labor costs. — from here.
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The road to Calcutta… Jack Welch scoffed at outsourcing as the culprit behind America’s anemic jobs growth. General Electric (nyse: GE – news – people ) garrulous ex-chief executive proclaimed the notion merely political, noting snidely that “it is election time.” He declared to a confab of the World Business Forum in New York that “It is the dumbest argument ever put out.” The legendary CEO warned leaders that to “stop two jobs from going abroad” would “kill 20 here.” Welch–once nicknamed “Neutron Jack” for his stance on vast layoffs–saw GE lead the vanguard in outsourcing to low-wage nations, such as ever-teeming India. — from here.
Go to the CEO of the company that made outsourcing to India a major business model on how to rebuild American jobs.
Genius. Would have never thought of that, really.